Yesterday, I wrote the note below to a former employee checking up on me. Take a read and I will add some additional comments at the end about the importance of a mastermind group.
Perhaps if I had put together a mastermind group, I would have turned the corner earlier with the AI component which had been – hell, still remains – my dream and the reason why I continued in my role as a boundary dispute attorney for so long.
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Ten years of soul crushing work for what for an outside observer appears to be meaningless has been too much time already.
I just received a call from an opposing attorney who indicated how one of his partners was involved in a dispute between two brothers over a deed which allegedly failed to get filed by the mother before her demise.
The end result? After verdict, the one brother shot and killed the other.
It finally dawned on me that if people were willing to spend 1/10th as much effort on changing themselves as they do attempting to change their neighbor, they would probably have the resources to pay for the down payment on the neighbors house, adjust the land the way they want it, and then sell it. Or, just take the loss and move on to a better life.
Though this might be difficult to comprehend, ironically I noticed that Penny Marshall of Laverne and Shirley just passed on. Do you recall the show? At the close of the opening credits, Laverne places a glove on one of the beer bottles which rolls on down the conveyor belt.
Well, my tie in to that was when I was back in Shanghai 11 years ago in December 2007. I was going to partner with a guy who had built up a diplomatic group that brought US Exporters to China and Chinese Foreign Direct Investment to various states in America.
He had some loon that thought he would purchase the “Laverne and Shirley Brewery” and carve it up into whole sellers booths to sell all sorts and types of bulk building products.
Obviously, there is no chance that this plan came into fruition because of the worldwide meltdown of the economy in September 2008.
But, it was in December 2007 that I pulled the plug on that opportunity and made my return for Christmas my exit. I came back because we had enrolled my daughter in kindergarten in the US and I couldn’t stand the idea of trying to live out of a suitcase overseas with my family back home.
As it turns out, though I haven’t been overseas, it’s been incredibly hard to disengage from business here at home … in the US too. I hope that the time and my work hasn’t been a complete sacrifice.
I invite you to take a look at my blogging efforts as of late. I suspect much of these comments will show up … tomorrow.
My advice, make your dream to be a good parent while your kids are still young and then if you want to chase after a business when their out have at it.
Of course, if it had worked out the way I had planned … I would be giving you advice of a completely different sort.
Merry Christmas!
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I’ll add that coming off that plane from China and having my daughter at age 5 followed by her brother at age 3 running to greet me with my wife happily bringing up the rear after having been separated for about 10 weeks is one of my most cherished memories.
Then, much like I am now, I found myself at the crossroads pondering my navel for about nine months before I finally decided on a new aim – bringing my ideas of legal, conceptual spaces (or as I called them “legal geometrics”) together in the one area in which I had most cleanly figured out the means for representation – adverse possession.
By 2013, I had published a couple of articles astoundingly the first in May, when unbeknownst to me at the time of writing the source of a key insight went public – Tableau Software.
Coming back from China, we found an apartment at the NW on-ramp of the Aurora Bridge just up from the Troll in the Seattle neighborhood at the “Center of the Universe” – Fremont.
I don’t know exactly how Tableau came onto my radar, but I knew these folks when they were operating out of the north wing of the Gilman Building.
President Christian Chabot gave me an audience and I also had a lunch with their marketing chief Elissa Fink. I don’t know why I didn’t press for work opportunity … other than being stubbornly committed to not go to work for or with someone else.
Well, I got one heck of an “education” as a result. Working for yourself teaches an incredible amount about what you like dislike as well as what you can tolerate and can’t tolerate.
Turns out I can tolerate quite a bit. But, that doesn’t mean that it was a good choice. Far from it.
Whether to my credit or discredit, I have a very hard time remaining dispassionate about my clients’ cases.
I would call it putting a matter on “slow simmer”. But the reality was, this just meant that they needn’t worry about the bill while I spent my time in constant rumination over their case.
What would have been a much better course … the course that I now seek to take?
I want to get an opportunity with Tableau Software at their marketing department AND release my mind from work when I’m not at it so I can concentrate on at the very least delivering the insights I have gleaned as to conceptual spaces and even more importantly – my family. That’s my dream now.
Returning to the insights I drew from a review of Robert Frosts Road Less Taken [HERE], I “sigh” at the “difference” it made for me to go and work in China and to be my own boss – both.
Most people have not done either. There is a reason for that. It takes not only guts to try something so different, but the likelihood that it will generate success is slight.
On the other hand, for someone who has the appetite for risk and adventure, to have not made the attempt would have kept me in a state of … “if only I had” … for the rest of my life.
I have now come to terms that this is not going to be my fate with respect to boundary dispute law, but I just can’t give up the dream of bringing out my popularizing ideas on conceptual spaces. But, to do this I need more skills – which I believe are available for the development at Tableau Software – AND a mastermind group of others to work on this together – i.e. the pronouns: “We, Us & Our.” So then …
1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8,
Schemeil, Schlimazel, Hasenpheffer, Incorporated
We’re gonna do it!
Give us any chance, we’ll take it.
Give us any rule, we’ll break it.
We’re gonna make our dreams come true.
Doin’ it our way.
Nothin’s gonna turn us back now.
Straight ahead and on the track now.
We’re gonna make our dreams come true.
Doin’ it our way.
There is nothin’ we won’t try.
Never heard the word impossible.
This time there’s no stopping us.
We’re gonna do it.
On your mark, get set, and go now.
Got a dream and we just know now.
We’re gonna make our dreams come true.
And we’ll do it our way, yes our way.
Make all our dreams come true.
And we’ll do it our way, yes our way.
Make all our dreams come true …
For me and you … ….. .
But don’t just take my word for it.
Enjoy the Laverne and Shirley Opening for yourselves [HERE].
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Photo Credit: https://www.imcdb.org/m74016.html